• Posted: July 10, 2020
• better construction

At the beginning of this year, the local commercial real estate market was booming. There were almost 30 percent more jobs located in Chicago’s central business district than there were a decade earlier, and the downtown office market was coming off its best year since 2007. Then, on March 11, the first case of COVID-19 in a downtown office building was confirmed. Though it wasn’t immediately apparent, it seems clear now that the commercial real estate market in the Chicago metro area was permanently changed that day. Within weeks, the vast majority of employees downtown and in suburban Cook County were working from home, where many remain despite progress locally reducing the spread of the virus. 

While many companies who have shifted to fully remote work models have reported being pleasantly surprised by productivity levels, safely returning to the workplace offers benefits that simply can’t be matched while offices remain closed. According to a Cushman & Wakefield study published in June, personal connections and bonding are suffering as a result of remote work, particularly among younger employees. As the study states, “even though employees report high levels of pride working for their companies and they like their company culture, it is hard to maintain a sense of personal connection and belonging to that culture when not nurtured and ‘lived’ in person.” This could be one of the reasons just 12 percent of U.S. workers said they want to work from home full-time in a Gensler survey released in late May.    

Safely reopening offices throughout Chicagoland and bringing these employees back, however, requires a broad evaluation of how the workplace has traditionally been set up and a plan to modify the environment in ways that mitigate the risk of COVID-19 transmission and reassure those who are ready to return to the office that their health is the highest priority. This can be accomplished both by reimagining the physical layout of office spaces to de-densify the work environment and create space between employees and by leveraging technology to reduce opportunities for virus transmission. 

Through automation, Powering Chicago contractors can create a virtually touch-free experience from the moment an employee enters an office in the morning to the moment they exit at the end of the day, powering a better workplace for all. In fact, the unionized electrical industry in Cook County has been installing a range of technology solutions for years that make possible a contactless environment, and now is the time to deploy them widely in office buildings throughout the region.  

Automatic doors are ubiquitous at newer commercial properties, and with the ease and speed with which they can be retrofitted in older buildings, there are few barriers to installing them in offices. Less common, but similarly straightforward to install, are thermal camera systems in highly trafficked locations that provide a contactless first line of defense. Access points like security gates can be controlled with fobs or mobile devices that don’t require an ID badge to touch another surface and elevator controls need not require someone to press a button with their hand. In bathrooms, motion-activated faucets, toilets and paper towel dispensers eliminate several additional high-touch surfaces. And with so much uncertainty about how the pandemic will unfold and the ways it will affect businesses’ spatial needs, investments in wireless connectivity offer the potential for office spaces to be quickly reconfigured as needs change in the months ahead. 

While these modifications require an upfront investment from building owners, managers or tenants, the cost is negligible when considering an alternate reality in which the buildings that drive our economy sit empty. The sooner we take advantage of the technology available to us and implement it through Chicagoland, the sooner workers will be able to safely return to their offices and the stronger Chicago’s economy will be. 

To learn more about the range of contactless solutions offered by our members to power Chicago to a better workplace for all, visit poweringchicago.com/contactlessoffice.